Subject: Iraq Talking Points: Q/A

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I. Q/A with a more aggressive person:
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Q: You're soft on Saddam! Get out of the way, liberal. You think you
can just hug the world and it'll love you? Idealistic fools like you
are a threat to the US, and unpatriotic to boot!

A: Unpatriotic is right -- for the people who funded and supported
Saddam, that wasn't the peace movement, that was -- remember? -- the
Pentagon, the militarists, remember?

You know, in the 1980s when I found out about Saddam Hussein's record,
I voiced opposition to my government's funding of Iraq (it funded both
Iraq and Iran -- but even more so the invading Iraq). When I did so,
the response I got from media-saturated Americans was: "what are you,
a friend of the Ayatollah?"

[Note: if this didn't happen to you,
you can certainly cite that it did happen
to many progressive/pro-peace folks, including
to me. Yes in the 1980s Reagan supported Iraq militarily,
selling arms to BOTH Iran and Iraq, in secret. It only came out, and
was admitted, later. Mostly supporting Saddam though, much more
support by these Reaganites and militarists for Saddam, who is George
Bush's ex-"buddy" -HB]

It was therefore the height of irony that the never episode took
place. When in 1991 I voiced opposition to our "leaders" in Washington
slaughtering Iraqis, I was more or less asked, "what are you, a friend
of Saddam?" by these Johnny-come-lately militarists and right-wingers
who went along with funding Saddam many years earlier. It seems that
you are "unpatriotic" unless you cheer-lead the funding of the likes
of Noriega, Saddam, and the Taliban by the CIA and Washington, and
then AGAIN cheer-lead the mass-murder of civilians proposed as
"solutions" to the problems these earlier fundings create. George
Orwell would spin in his grave...

The CIA funded the Taliban...the CIA funded Noriega...
the CIA and Pentagon and militarists sold arms to the Ayatollah, and
to Saddam himself...THEY did all this, not the patriotic dissidents,
not the patriotic peace movement.! THEY, the militarists,  promote the
US being the #1 arms-merchant, making the world a more dangerous
place, THEY are unpatriotic. THEY told us to look the other way, not
me, not us, not the peace movement, but THEY, the militarists, told us
to look the other way when Saddam used gas, when the Taliban were
being created, when Iran was being funded, and ... 

...and when Saudi Arabia (have you ever heard a peacenik defend that
dictatorship?  Didn't think so! Texas oilmen, yeah, THEY defend it!)
provides money from its oil riches to the likes of Al Qaeda, and Bush
(and many Democrats along with Republicans) turn a blind eye...THEY
are a threat to the nation.

And what did the militarists have to offer in wisdom after 9/11? They
"well, maybe we need to be less squeamish about working with unsavory
elements in order to fight against terrorism". What? Excuse me?
"Working with unsavory elements" is exactly what got the Taliban
funded! Anyone home?

These policies are not only immoral, they are deeply harmful and
dangerous to US citizens, as well as to the rest of the world The
patriotic dissidents and pro-peace folks who have oppose these insane
policies are not unpatriotic: the people who have perpetuated these
policies and continue to do so, and dupe the well-intentioned American
public into supporting them, THEY are the unpatriotic ones, THEY are the
ones who should hang their heads low in shame. And the people who
oppose this madness are not a threat to the nation; the leaders who
perpetuate this madness, THEY are a threat to our nation, and to the world.

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II. Q/A with a less aggressive person:
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Q: So, you're one of those peacenik do-gooder softies who's against
taking military action against Saddam, right?

A: By "military action" you really mean, "go to war" or more
accurately, "launch a military assault against", right?

Q: Sure, fine, a military assault against Saddam -- you're against
that, right?

A: One can't go to war against a single PERSON, can one? That's not
what a "war" is after all. I think what you mean is "go to war against
Iraq" or more accurately, "launch a military assault against Iraq"

Yes, I oppose launching a military assault against the country of
Iraq -- which would mean launching a military assault against the
people of Iraq. Yes, I oppose that.

Q: But Saddam must be stopped. You surely can't argue with that!

A: What do you mean by "must be stopped"?

Q: He's a dictator...he oppresses his own people, and heck, he even
used weap-

A: "...used weapons of mass destruction against his own people"?

Q: Yes, that's right..

A: That's true..That's  just missing three words: "Saddam used weapons
of mass destruction against his own people WITH OUR SUPPORT" Or I
should say, not with your or my support, but with that of our
"leaders" in Washington. You're surely aware that "we" supported
Saddam right up until the moments before Iraq invaded Kuwait..?

Q: Yeah, we made mistakes. Ok, not "we", but Washington, but just
because mistakes were made by our leaders...

A: Do you think that sending arms in secret to Iraq was a mistake? And
sending arms to  the Ayatollah at the same time was a mistake? Weapons
manufacturers made huge profits,...

Q: Yeah, and Washington didn't mind having those two
counties having it at each other, at each other's throats, profiting
while Iraq and Iran bled..

A: It wasn't the Ayatollah who bled.. It wasn't Saddam who bled...it
was the conscripts on both sides, and the civilians on both sides
too..

Q: Yeah, it was pretty ugly, and maybe not even a mistake, maybe an ugly
policy in Washington -- and they didn't care how many Iraqi and
Iranian people died, and they sold weapons to both sides.. But that
doesn't change the fact that Saddam needs to be stopped. In other
words, he's still very dangerous. Do you deny that?

A: I certainly don't deny that Saddam Hussein is a brutal dictator --
like many others that the U.S. supports today. When Indonesia invaded
East Timor and killed 300,000, it was with US support. Noriega in
Panama, was on the CIA payroll, when he was just as much a
dictator. The Taliban were created and funded with billions (Billions
with a "B")  of CIA money. When Colombia was the #1 worst human rights
violator in all of the Latin American continent, it was also the #1
recipient of US aid. Saudi Arabia is led by a brutal family
dictatorship supported by the US. Same with the monarchy in Kuwait.
Same with Qatar. Same with Turkey, which treats the Kurds with such
mass-scale brutality they make Saddam's look milder by comparison. Not
to mention Turkish police and Turkish prisons. Need I go on..?

Q: No need..look, I think you're inflating things a little bit, but I
won't deny that our leaders regularly support any thug that they think
will be "strategically" useful to them. And you don't need to convince
me that what's "Strategically useful" to Exxon-Mobil or Bush's buddies
is not necessarily in the interest of the American people.

A: Or corporate interests generally, their short-term profits, aren't
in the interest of the American people, that's right. And Clinton
worked in a very similar war.

Q: What, you're not a liberal "the Democrats are always right" fellow?
Anyway, I concede the the REASONS Bush is against Saddam are not
purely human rights one -- or he and his father would have not
supported all those other thugs you mentioned -- but you conceded that
Saddam is indeed a brutal dictator, right?

A: Right..

Q: Now we're getting somewhere. Now it's just a matter of discussing
What do to about it. And you don't deny that Saddam is one of the
biggest threats in the world, do you?

A: Actually, not only do *I* deny that, but the head of the weapons
inspectors denies that.

Q: Who?

A: Scott Ritter, who is a former team leader of UNSCOM weapons
inspectors in Iraq. As reported by the BBC, "Mr Ritter was not always
popular with the Iraqi authorities - as head of the inspection team
until 1998, he was renowned for his tough line and intrusive searches"
He later revealed that he discovered that the US was using the
inspections to spy on Iraq and protested against this. He also says
that Iraq has been overwhelmingly -- 90-95% -- "disarmed" since the
program began.

http://www.webactive.com/webactive/cspin/cspin20020510.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/2243627.stm

Q: I didn't hear that, no, but this is a bit strange...especially
given that Iraq kicked out UN inspectors in 1998..

A: No, actually UN inspection left in 1998, they were not kicked
out..It's true that Iraq didn't let them back in afterwards.

Q: Why not?

A: For one thing, the reason the inspectors left is because the US
told them to leave so they could bomb Iraq some more. Of course you
know that Iraq has been bombed regularly every year, the whole time of
the inspections?

Q: Well maybe they thought we needed to keep pressure on Saddam..!

A: Did Saddam get hurt in these bombings? Or more villages, more
hospitals, more civilians, more Iraqi children?

Q: Maybe we should be more careful, but..

A: One more thing: this relates to the conditions for UN
inspections. This is something leaders refuse to talk about even if
they OPPOSE going to war against Iraq. They insist that UN inspections
need to be "unconditional"

Q: You're advocating restricting access?

A: There is a difference between "unrestricted" and "unconditional". No,
I'm not in favor of having a ton of restrictions. But
conditions -- that's another matter -- do you even know what these
conditions are?

Q: Ok, what are they?  [Sarcastically] That we let Saddam him have
more weapons?  That we all sing "We love Saddam"? and "For he's a
jolly good fellow" to him??

A: Glad you asked. As Scott Ritter will tell you -- and as
will Dennis Halliday and Hans Von Sponneck -- there
are, by design NO specifics about what Iraq must achieve. There is
nothing in writing that says, precisely, "once you pass THIS test,
then the  sanctions that have been killing Iraqis will be lifted".

Q: Like Saddam cares and hates to see people be killed?

A: Even dictators don't want their own people killed like that,
partly by convincing themselves they are patriotic, and mostly
the knowledge that even a dictator needs the good will of their
people. That's why even during his most murderous years he
made sure to have education and health care etc -- not because he's
nice, but out of wanting to stay in power.

Q: Fine...

A: That's not an unreasonable condition, is it? To want to have on
paper WHAT specifically needs to be done to get the sanctions lifted,
with a time-line for doing that, once those conditions are met.

Q: Yeah, I know, several people have said years back -- before today's
"we need a regime change talk" -- always changed the conditions so as
to keep the sanctions going on indefinitely.. So that's the condition?

A: It's now openly admitted that they want a regime change. The reason
can't possibly be that Saddam is Brutal, because Washington supported
Saddam at the hight of his crimes, and even after knowing  he used
poison gas... And they supported him when he was far, far more
militarily dangerous...compared to now when Scott Ritter says Iraq is
over 90% disarmed compared to 1990. And you know who Dennis Halliday
and Hans Von Sponneck are?

Q: No but I suppose you're going to tell me...[smiles]

A:  It's not exactly something CNN has bent over backwards to report..
Did You Know this? That Dennis Halliday was the United Nations
Humanitarian Coordinator for Iraq from 1997-1998 and resigned in
protest over the sanctions?

This man had been with the U.N for 34 years and had formerly been
Assistant Secretary-General of the U.N. He must have had some very
strong reasons to resign. Is he on CNN? On ABC? On the front page of
the NY Times? Why are Americans not allowed to hear his voice? He was
also excluded from Sen. Biden's "discussion" of Iraq...

Halliday was replaced by someone that -- one can only assume -- the
U.N. thought would be "safer" for that position. That was Hans von
Sponneck who was UN humanitarian coordinator for Iraq from 1998 to 2000
-- and ended up ALSO resigning in protest. You would think that their
voices would be among the most important for Americans to hear: the
very heads of the UN oil-for-food and other programs...yet why are
their voices so strongly excluded? Why the need to protect American
ears from the truth? Want to find out what they don't want you to
hear? Here are three links:

* Interview with Halliday: http://www.zmag.org/ZMag/articles/barsamian.htm

* Article from The UK Guardian by von Sponeck:
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2131

* Halliday and Sponeck jointly write on "The Hostage Nation" and ask,
"Is international law only applicable to the losers? Does the UN
security council only serve the powerful?"  adding "The UK and the
US..are fully aware that the UN embargo operates in breach of the UN
covenants on human rights, the Geneva and Hague conventions and other
international laws.." Their statement:
http://www.zmag.org/halsponiraq.htm 

But if you read just one source about Halliday, read this:

http://www.zmag.org/edwinthalliday.htm

which refutes the idea that "it's all Saddam's fault" that Iraqis
starve. He shows that Iraqis barely get $190 per head of population
per YEAR, from the "oil for food program" That wouldn't be enough even
in 1991, let alone after much of the country's water systems, electric
systems, hospitals, etc, have been devastated in the gulf war. And as
for military inspections and food being "diverted", this is what
Dennis Halliday says:

"There's no basis for that assertion at all. The Secretary-General
has reported repeatedly that there is no evidence that food is being
diverted by the government in Baghdad. We have 150 observers on the
ground in Iraq. Say the wheat ship comes in from god knows where, in
Basra, they follow the grain to some of the mills, they follow the
flour to the 49,000 agents that the Iraqi government employs for this
programme, then they follow the flour to the recipients and even
interview some of the recipients -- there is no evidence of diversion
of foodstuffs whatever ever in the last two years"

There is more:

See http://www.zmag.org/edwinthalliday.htm

Q: Where can I find more information about what Scott Ritter is saying?

a) This article is reproduced from Newsday
"What, If Anything, Does Iraq Have to Hide?"

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2174

Excerpt from Scott Ritter (who is a Republican who voted for Bush, see
link b) below): "Unfortunately my warnings were not heeded. In
December, 1998, continued manipulation of the UNSCOM inspection
process by the United States led to a fabricated crisis that had
nothing to do with legitimate disarmament. This crisis led to the
United States ordering UNSCOM inspectors out of Iraq two days before
the start of Operation Desert Fox, a 72-hour bombing campaign executed
by the United States and Great Britain that lacked Security Council
authority. Worse, the majority of the targets bombed were derived from
the unique access the UNSCOM inspectors had enjoyed in Iraq, and had
more to do with the security of Saddam Hussein than weapons of mass
destruction. Largely because of this, Iraq has to date refused to
allow inspectors back to work.

"On Sept. 3, 1998, I provided detailed testimony before a joint
hearing of the Senate Armed Services and Foreign Relations Committees
concerning the circumstances of my resignation as a chief inspector of
the United Nations Special Commission (UNSCOM) ...In the nearly four
years that have passed, much has been made of this presentation,
especially by those who seek to use my words to reinforce the current
case for war against Iraq.My testimony was an accurate, balanced
assessment in full keeping with the facts available. As of September,
1998, Iraq had not been fully disarmed...[but] We could account for 90
percent to 95 percent of Iraq's proscribed weaponry, [out of] the 100
percent required by the Security Council..As such, I spent a great
deal of my testimony speaking of the need to maintain a robust regime
of inspections that objectively implemented the mandate of the
Security Council..In 1998, I told the Senate that UNSCOM had a job to
do and we expected to be able to carry it out in accordance within the
framework of relevant Security Council resolutions. I emphasized the
danger of entering into inspection activity that lacked any compelling
arms control reason, noting that in doing so we would be heading down
a slippery slope of confrontation that was not backed by our
mandate. I pointed out the importance of the United States keeping
commitments made to the Security Council."

And b) http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=2148

Excerpt: "I need to say right out front," he said minutes into his
speech, "I'm a card-carrying Republican in the conservative-moderate
range who voted for George W. Bush for President. I'm not here with a
political agenda. I'm not here to slam Republicans. I am one."

This is not about the security of the United States," said this
card-carrying Republican while pounding the lectern. "This is about
domestic American politics. The national security of the United States
of America has been hijacked by a handful of neo- conservatives who
are using their position of authority to pursue their own
ideologically- driven political ambitions. The day we go to war for
that reason is the day we have failed collectively as a nation." 

Overall Iraq info page:

http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/IraqCrisis.htm

Q: So you're against war, and against inspections...
I know that my friend would say, "the only person you're supporting is
Saddam"

A: This does sound familiar: those of us who opposed the Gulf War in
1991 in favor of peaceful means, were told "the only person you're
helping is Saddam"

One small problem: Saddam is still in power.

One other small problem: 500,000 innocent Iraqis have been killed.

Now let's go back in a time machine to 1991 and that person telling
me"the only person you're helping is Saddam by opposing a war against
Iraq" If only we could go back then and say EXCUSE ME?! You're about
to kill a half million Iraqis while keeping Saddam in power, the only
person YOU are harming are Iraqis, and *we* [the peace movement] are
protecting the Iraqi people!

You know, in the 1980s when I found out about Saddam Hussein's record,
I voiced opposition to my government's funding of Iraq (it funded both
Iraq and Iran -- but even more so the invading Iraq). When I did so,
the response I got from media-saturated Americans was: "what are you,
a friend of the Ayatollah?"

It was therefore the height of irony that the never episode took
place. When in 1991 I voiced opposition to our "leaders" in Washington
slaughtering Iraqis, I was more or less asked, "what are you, a friend
of Saddam?" by these Johnny-come-lately militarists and right-wingers
who went along with funding Saddam many years earlier. It seems that
you are "unpatriotic" unless you cheer-lead the funding of the likes
of Noriega, Saddam, and the Taliban by the CIA and Washington, and
then AGAIN cheer-lead the mass-murder of civilians proposed as
"solutions" to the problems these earlier fundings create. George
Orwell would spin in his grave...

And yes I said "we suggested peaceful diplomatic ways instead of War
back in 1991" Yes, a peaceful way out. How easily we erase history.
The fact that Saddam and the Taliban are ugly regimes (like Saudi
Arabia and so many others) doesn't mean we should like to the American
people. We are told the Taliban refused to hand over Bin Laden. The
fact is the Taliban DID offer to hand over Bin Laden, they did what we
would have done: we would have said "ok, show us your evidence, and
then based on evidence we extradite; you don't extradite without
evidence being even given" Did they mean it? There was only one way to
find out, to take them up on, but Bush Jr. was afraid that they might
mean it, which would have spoiled his invasion. We now know
(http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/south_asia/newsid_1550000/1550366.stm)
that Bush Jr. planned to invade Afghanistan starting back in July,
long before 9/11. We even know that Afghanistan's Taleban even warned
the US that THEY heard Al Qaeda was up to no good, and ASKED the US to
attack Al Qaeda (not Afghanistan) to before Al Qaeda attacked the Us
-- the US and UN ignored this (BBC story and link are cited, with
analysis, in http://EconomicDemocracy.org/ taleban-warn.html namely
see http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/2242594.stm )

Similarly, Saddam offered to withdraw from Kuwait. Not because he's
nice but to save face, so long as a "conference on the middle
east/Israel Palestine" was agreed. Just to save face. Did Saddam mean
it? The only way to find out would have been to take Saddam up on the
offer -- such "linking of issues" is not only ok, but if the
"condition" Saddam gives is not "give me money" so it's not blackmail,
but if the condition is something you should WANT to do anyway,
something that's a good idea anyway, then Bush Sr. flatly declined only
because he was afraid Saddam meant it, only because Bush Sr. 
was afraid the he couldn't invade Iraq if a diplomatic peaceful way
out occurred.

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WHAT DO YOU PROPOSE INSTEAD OF WAR THEN?"

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In summary: Iraq is 90-95% disarmed.

A) Yes to inspections, but #1, WITH the condition
that the US stop manipulating, stop spying, stop 
manufacturing conflicts just to have an excuse to attack,
as Scott Ritter says. and WITH the condition that the inspections
have WRITTEN goals that says when those goals are reached, the
sanctions are over. And Increase the food-for-oil so 
as Dennis Halliday points out, it's not $190 per Iraqi per year but a
reasonable higher level.

B) All actions need to be taken legally.

That means the UN, not the US. We either live in a world rule by law,
or by force. If we push for the latter, it's not only immoral and
killing i Iraqi civilians and children, but it's also a world in which
there is MORE terrorism not less, against the US. What Al Qaeda did
was despicable and immoral, but it's not a coincidence it didn't
attack Denmark. We should not agree to "blackmail" if conditions are
"give us money or weapons" but when people, even murderous maniacs,
have conditions like "Stop killing Iraqis and Palestinians and stop
supporting the Saudi Dictators" and other things which we should be
stopping ANYWAY, then we have two reasons to do these things: It's the
RIGHT thing to do, quite aside form the fact that on top of it, doing
the right thing weakens the support network, and helps starve, the
extremist networks who are only helped by a sea of misery, and who
shrivel when there is no sea of misery but Arabs who can say, "America
doesn't bomb us now, they are economic allied and friends of the
people, not of Arab dictators or brutal Israeli ex-generals like
Sharon"

C) Stop the militarists' policies of "working with 
unsavory elements" ; stop  US arms sales abroad to dictatorial
or brutal regimes ; stop the hyper-secrecy of the CIA which
keeps things a secret from the voting American people more than they
do from potential adversaries, and which only allows our government to
do dirty work abroad which they know we the American people wouldn't
stand for.. If these unpatriotic militaristic people hadn't
funded Saddam back in the 1980s..and hadn't thrown weapons
all over the world (at a very nice profit thank you very much) we'd be
much, much safer today. They are a threat to the US, not 
the patriotic dissidents who oppose war. So as you can
see, anti-war isn't about warm-fuzzy rose-colored-eyeglasses,
but a very practical, pragmatic, effective, patriotic policy.
  
D) What applies to others, must apply to us. Principles, by
definition, can't be selective. Would we say it's ok for Sudan to bomb
the US? Clinton bombed the Sudan accusing it for manufacturing chemical
weapons, then backed off --oops -- it was making medicines after
all. Huge numbers died as a result since HALF the country's medicinal
manufacturing was destroyed. What is the right reaction? Should Sudan
have bombed the US (never mind that it can't, but if it could, what, in
principle, should it do?)  Maybe some people say, "yeah,  
they should bomb the US" but other than Bin Laden types..? we
should dismiss them as brutal, lawless, mad, and rightly so.


Would we advocate bombing (US-allied) Saudi Arabia, China, Russia?

Would we advocate bombing other (US-allied) Indonesia, Israel,
and so many others?

Would we advocate having Washington bombed by Sudan?

Would we advocate having Washington bombed by Nicaragua after
the World Court found Reagan guilty of terrorism in mining Nicaragua's
harbors and funding terrorists in Nicaragua?

"..Jesus Christ, who pointed out, and famously defined the notion,
hypocrite. A hypocrite is a person who focuses on the other fellow's
crimes and refuses to look at his own. That's the definition of
hypocrite by George Bush's favorite philosopher. When I repeat that
I'm not taking a radical position. I'm taking a position that is just
elementary morality.." -Noam Chomsky

For more on this point, see:

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=40&ItemID=2064

Excerpt: "More generally, it would be hard to find anyone who accepts the
doctrine that massive bombing is the appropriate response to terrorist
crimes -- whether those of Sept. 11, or even worse ones, which are,
unfortunately, not hard to find. That follows if we adopt the
principle of universality: if an action is right (or wrong) for
others, it is right (or wrong) for us. Those who do not rise to the
minimal moral level of applying to themselves the standards they apply
to others -- more stringent ones, in fact -- plainly cannot be taken
seriously when they speak of appropriateness of response; or of right
and wrong, good and evil.

"It would seem to follow, clearly enough, that ONLY those who support
bombing of Washington in response to these international terrorist
crimes -- that is, no one -- can accept the "reciprocally absolute
doctrine" on response to terrorist atrocities or consider massive
bombardment to be an appropriate and properly "calibrated" response to
them.

"It applies to other cases as well. Take Haiti, which has provided ample
evidence in its repeated calls for extradition of Emmanuel Constant,
who directed the forces responsible for thousands of deaths under the
military junta that the US was tacitly supporting (not to speak of
earlier history); these requests the US ignores, presumably because of
concerns about what Constant would reveal if tried. The most recent
request was on 30 September 2001, while the US was demanding that the
Taliban hand over Bin Laden.[14] The coincidence was also ignored, in
accord with the convention that minimal moral standards must be
vigorously rejected."
-- which is what the militarists want
us to do instead of rise to real moral standards and apply
things equally. Their so called "pragmatism" about
"you do gooders don't understand, we need to be tough minded"
is what got us into the mess in the first place. Let's get
out of it, in patriotic pro-peace resistance to take America back!

****************************************
Epilogue from interview with Chomsky:
****************************************


Q: The war against terrorism will have a lot more casualties, a lot more
innocent casualties. Can this be justified?

NC: Again, the question cannot be answered in the abstract. But there are
some criteria for answering it. One simple criterion is that if some
action is legitimate for us, then it is legitimate for others. To take
an example, if it is legitimate for the US to bomb Afghanistan because
Washington suspects that the plot to carry out the 9-11 atrocities was
hatched there (the FBI has recently conceded they still have only
suspicions, no firm evidence), then a fortiori, it would have been
legitimate for Nicaraguans (Cubans, Lebanese, and a long list of
others) to bomb Washington because they know, not suspect, that it is
the source of terrorist atrocities that far exceed even 9-11. Those
who do not accept the latter conclusion -- that is, every sane person
-- cannot accept the former one, unless they reject the most
elementary moral principles, and thereby abandon any claim to speak of
right and wrong, good and evil.

The same criterion applies universally. It does not answer all
questions, but does answer a great many of them. It is true that
elementary moral principles such as this cannot be considered by the
rich and powerful, because of the consequences that follow very
quickly. Nevertheless, honest people should be willing to entertain them.

http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=36&ItemID=2068

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Non-corporate news and analysis on Iraq:

http://www.zmag.org/CrisesCurEvts/Iraq/IraqCrisis.htm

On 9/11:

* "SEPTEMBER 11th FAMILIES FOR PEACEFUL TOMORROWS", Relatives
of victims of 9/11 speak out against more war and death:
http://www.peacefultomorrows.org/index.html

* To find out about Peace Events for 9/11 or help organize them:

http://www.unitedforpeace.org/

This includes Rita Lasar who lost family in 9/11,
Masuda Sultan whose civilian family was killed by WAshington's
bobms over Afghanistan, Arun Gandhi, Mahatama Gandhi's grandson,
Osacr Arias, and others.

* Non-coroporate news and analysis on Terror, Iraq etc:

http://www.globalexchange.org/september11/

http://www.zmag.org/reactionscalam.htm

Top Ten Reasons Why the US Should Not Invade Iraq:


http://www.globalexchange.org/september11/invadeIraq082702.html

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Sign the petition for students, faculty, and staff: against a war on
Iraq:

http://www.noiraqattack.org/

* * * * 

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